Las Vegas 3: A dilemma of its own design, cont'd

Las Vegas Boulevard – the ten-lane arterial that services one of the largest entertainment zones on earth – is not a nice place for a pedestrian.  And not just because the sidewalks are too narrow to accommodate the crowds generated by the huge hotel-and-casino complexes that are now close enough together, and in some cases seamlessly integrated, to encourage such surprising behaviour as getting North Americans to walk.
No, one of the other unpleasant realities is this:

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The volume of pedestrians on Las Vegas Boulevard feels like it has reached Times Square levels – but unlike in New York, there is continual conflict with vehicles crossing the sidewalk to access the stores and parking lots behind.  As a consequence of the parking-lot pattern of the previous era – and the sheer number of curb cuts – peds and cars play a continual game of chicken.

Here is one side of one the Strip’s busiest blocks – with a dozen curb cuts:

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And while you might expect in this frontier culture that the car would have or take the right-of-way, that’s not what happens.  The flow of people on feet is so relentless, there’s seldom a break for the vehicles, which then start to back up and obstruct the traffic flow behind them.

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It gets so bad that private security begins to function as traffic cops – and are often simply ignored:

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All this might be alleviated if there were, as in Vancouver, rear lanes from which the parking could be accessed.  But even in new developments, especially those that demand huge floorplates for their casinos, porte cocheres for the hotels and underground parking are still accessed from the boulevard:

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Unbelievably, these driveways are often entered from across the traffic flow, requiring left-hand turns across three or four lanes of oncoming traffic, without signals:

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It’s not just in the casinos that Las Vegas visitors are making big bets.

And it’s not that they don’t know they have a problem. 

Part 4 here.